Press & Media

“Lesley Dill’s words-inspired multimedia works to be on exhibition at LSU MOA through January,” The Times-Picayune

September 4, 2013

Taming and culling artistic inspiration can often be a difficult task, but multimedia artist Lesley Dill uses a calm, organic approach toward her work. “I think of (ideas) as almost like frogs — jump-up solutions,” explains Dill from her New York studio. “You’re thinking about what to do next, then up from inside your stomach jumps an idea or a material or a medium.” A collection of the results from those ideas will be on exhibition in Baton Rouge from Sept. 6 through Jan. 19 at the LSU Museum of Art. The exhibit, titled “I Gave My Whole Life to Words,” honors Dill’s lifelong love of the written word and her tactile physical representations of her own interpretations.

“Lesley Dill: E is for Ecstasy,” A Blade of Grass

March 7, 2013

Lesley Dill’s interdisciplinary practice combines sculpture, literature and, more recently, opera. She works with text, with the material of words, the way others carve rock. We had the pleasure of attending a Buddhist retreat together at Poets’ House in Tribeca during June 2012. We bonded over our mutual love for silent walking, and devotion. Since then, we have been meeting monthly to converse about deep practice, dreaming up future performative collaborations, which can only be described as gift giving. Dill has been on the road for the past six months with several major exhibition projects. I catch her as she returns from her show, Poetic Visions: Sister Gertrude Morgan & Shimmer at the Halsey Institute in Charleston, South Carolina. She is about to receive a lifetime achievement award in printmaking from the Southern Graphics Conference International, where she will also launch a new collaborative book, I Had A Blueprint of History.

“Poetic Visions – Lesley Dill’s language arts,” Cascadia Weekly

October 25, 2012

Dill uses Morgan’s own words to great effect in the installation, varying between further themes of light (heaven) and darkness (hell) and creating an artistic swath that manages to encompass a broad spectrum of emotions and events.

“Street preacher inspires artists, rappers, more,” wnd.com

October 25, 2012

Did Sister Gertrude’s life really make a real difference? God alone knows, but she has become an unlikely muse to at least a few artists in the secular world in spite of her oddness and the always unpopular message of impending doom barking at her heels. One of the most interesting is artist Lesley Dill and her magnificent installation, first at Arthur Roger Gallery and still circulating: “Hell Hell Hell Heaven Heaven Heaven: Encountering Sister Gertrude Morgan & Revelation” (2010). Dill is well known for her fascination with Emily Dickinson and incorporation of lettering, poetry and literature into feminist and spiritual themes.

“Lesley Dill’s ‘Faith & the Devil’ Comes To George Adams Gallery,” Huffington Post

May 23, 2012

The mission of Lesley Dill’s ‘Faith & the Devil’ could not be any more ambitious: the artist aims to examine the eternal struggle between faith and evil in philosophy and literature. To us, this sounds like the college thesis from hell, and standing amidst the installation, you start to get the feeling the artist began to go mad in the process.

“A multifaceted art exhibit meriting the ‘visions’ in its name,” Crosscut.com

December 15, 2011

Lesley Dill’s Poetic Visions: from Shimmer to Sister Gertrude Morgan focuses on two bodies of work by the versatile artist: one is metallic sculpture and the other is an installation inspired by the late folk artist, preacher, and New Orleans phenomenon Sister Gertrude Morgan. This exhibit is what you dream those dusty Smithsonian displays could be. It is history gone wild; a show of visual might that makes one feel like a child entering Disneyland.

Lesley Dill at the Whatcom Museum, Washington

July 23, 2011

Lesley Dill’s “Poetic Visions: From Shimmer to Sister Gertrude Morgan” at the Whatcom Museum, Washington, October 23, 2011 – March 4, 2012.

“Fierceness and Fragility: A Conversation with Lesley Dill,” Sculpture

November 22, 2010

Lesley Dill’s sculptures made an impression on me some years ago at Graphic Studio in Tampa, particularly a tea-stained, paper dress that popped outward to become three-dimensional. A large traveling exhibition of her work—recently shown at the Saint Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts and on view at the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina through January 3, 2011—features numerous sculptures made of metal, paper, photographs, and fabric with seamless transitions from one medium to another. Dill integrates words, myth, and ideas with a variety of materials to attract and involve the viewer.

“Lesley Dill: Hell Hell Hell/ Heaven Heaven Heaven,” Gambit Weekly

October 11, 2010

Lesley Dill: Hell Hell Hell/ Heaven Heaven Heaven by Eric Bookhardt, GAMBIT WEEKLY This was unexpected. Since the 1970s, Lesley Dill has been known for her gossamer sculptural works based on poetry and the body, especially the female form, which she often cobbled out of verses — many from Emily Dickinson — cut from steel,…

“The Word as Flesh”, The New Orleans Art Review

October 22, 2007

Seven, nearly life-size female figures fashioned out of copper and wire lettering fill the gallery floor. Each form is adorned with a ball gown and ornate headdresses. These “Word Queens” seem to float and glide through the space as if it were a royal ball, as banners of words and phrases are suspended from the ceiling above.